A Heart for Helping
Becka's love for animals grew into a commitment to helping those who needed someone in their corner. Through fostering, volunteering and hands-on rescue work, she continues to turn compassion into action.
Opening Her Home
In 2021, Becka opened her home to fostering, giving rescue animals a safe place between where they had been and the forever homes waiting for them.
Building Connections
For Becka, rescue is also about people. She believes in bringing together volunteers, adopters, supporters and rescue partners to build a community where more animals have the chance to be safe and loved.
Meet Becka
For Becka, the desire to help animals grew from a love she had always carried into an awareness that there was much more happening beyond the animals in her own home.
While working aboard a cruise ship and traveling abroad, she saw firsthand the effects of animal overpopulation and the difficult conditions facing animals in communities with limited resources. It changed the way she looked at what it meant to help.
Then, during a visit to Freeport, The Bahamas in 2017, a stray animal appeared outside a friend's home looking for food.
Her friend explained that he stayed nearby as long as they fed him.
Becka remembers thinking there simply had to be a way to help.
Years later, as Co-Founder & Director of Communications & Compassion for Who Rescued Who NS, she is still asking that question whenever an animal needs someone: How can we help?
We asked Becka about the animals she has never forgotten, fostering, the difficult side of rescue, the importance of community, and what keeps her doing the work even when her heart tells her she cannot possibly leave another one behind.
“There Had to Be a Way”
Before Who Rescued Who NS existed, Becka had already spent much of her life opening her heart and her home to animals.
As a child and teenager, she often took in kittens from accidental litters. Later, as a young adult, she volunteered with the SPCA, walking dogs and spending time with cats who needed companionship. But seeing animals while traveling abroad changed something for her.
Animal overpopulation, limited resources and the number of animals needing help made her realize that caring about them was not enough. She wanted to find a way to do something.
That feeling became especially real during a visit to Freeport, The Bahamas, in 2017.
Outside the home where she was staying was a stray looking for food. Becka was told that he remained nearby when people fed him.
Her reaction was immediate.
“I just knew there had to be a way.”
That desire to find a way would eventually become part of the foundation of Who Rescued Who NS. Becka wanted to create connections between animals who needed help and people who shared the same desire to help them.
For her, rescue was not only about saving individual animals. It was about creating a community of kindness.
The One Who Came Home With Her
Do you remember the first animal you personally rescued?
There were many kittens before him, but one animal stands out when Becka thinks about the beginning of her life as a foster.
His name was Ochre.
Becka was a first-time foster when she was asked to pick up a cat who had been adopted and was being returned.
When she arrived, the family was crying and apologizing. Becka reassured them that it was okay, even though at the time she could not fully understand how someone could give up a cat.
Then she got into the car with Ochre.
She stroked his head while he purred and looked up at her.
“You’re not a bad kitty.”
Ochre never left.
He became Becka’s first foster fail and one of the animals who helped shape her understanding of what fostering could mean.
He would not be the last animal who made letting go difficult.
Becka estimates that around 15 foster cats eventually passed through her home.
At one point, she had even planned to keep a bottle-fed kitten from The Bahamas named O’Malley.
Then Cheddar-Bob arrived.
She fell in love with him too.
So much for the plan.
The Ones Who Keep Her in Rescue
Of all the animals you’ve helped, is there one rescue that has stayed with you?
For Becka, it is often the animals who seemed to have the odds stacked against them.
She remembers Frisco, a dog suffering from an infected centipede bite. At one point, the outlook was so uncertain that they were told he might have only 48 hours.
Today, he is thriving in a home in Toronto.
She thinks about Stinker too.
Stinker was only five weeks old and small enough to sit in Becka’s palm when she came into her life in rough shape.
Her family eventually adopted her.
The tiny animal Becka once held in her hand became a happy, deeply loved member of a family.
These are the animals Becka thinks about during the difficult days.
They are, as she puts it, “the ones that keep me in rescue.”
When Rescue Hurts
The happy endings are the part of rescue most people get to see.
There are adoption photographs, excited families and animals finally settling into safe homes.
Becka knows there is another side.
There are animals who cannot be saved. There are medical decisions no one wants to make. There are animals left behind because there simply is not enough space, time, money or help.
She describes seeing an injured, neglected or homeless animal as bringing an immediate feeling of grief and helplessness, followed closely by the need to find a way to help.
How do you deal with knowing you can’t save every animal you see?
“Not well.”
Becka relies on a strong support system that allows her to cry when she needs to and reminds her of the animals they have been able to save. That emotional weight is one of the realities of rescue she wishes more people understood.
People often see the successful adoptions and adorable animals waiting for homes. They do not always see the hours behind them, the setbacks or how deeply a single loss can hurt.
“One setback hits harder than months of success.”
Knowing When Your Heart Is Full
With three cats and a dog at home, Becka can laugh when someone asks how she manages not to keep every animal.
Experience has taught her that loving an animal also means recognizing your own limits.
It means understanding what is best for the animals already depending on you and recognizing compassion fatigue before there is nothing left to give.
For Becka, taking care of herself has become part of being able to continue taking care of them.
She is still learning how to balance rescue with work, family and everyday life.
Some days that means determining what is truly an emergency and what can be shared with another volunteer. Other days it means making herself stop, rest, eat properly, exercise or simply go for a walk.
Her reminder to herself is simple:
“You cannot pour from an empty cup.”
There Is No Typical Rescue Day
A rescue day might involve feeding fosters, picking up donations, taking an animal to a medical appointment, answering emails, reviewing foster or adoption applications, handling finances, attending meetings or trying to keep people informed through social media.
Usually, it involves several of those things at once.
When everything becomes overwhelming, Becka tries to stop for a moment.
She talks with a friend. She takes some time for herself. Sometimes she looks through photographs of adopted animals with their new families.
Those photographs remind her why all of it matters.
When They Realize They Are Safe
What is it like watching a frightened or neglected animal begin to understand that they are finally safe?
For Becka, there are few things more beautiful.
It can happen when an animal begins to play.
It might be the moment they become excited about a favorite toy or treat.
They begin to understand that this new life is theirs.
Safety is real.
Watching that transformation is one of the reasons Becka continues doing the work.
Saying goodbye afterward, however, has never become easy.
When a foster leaves, Becka feels as though a piece of the heart she poured into that animal leaves with them.
She allows herself to grieve.
Then she looks at the life waiting on the other side of that goodbye and remembers why she let them go.
There is another animal waiting.
“Attachment Means You Are Doing a Good Job”
What would you tell someone who wants to foster but is afraid they’ll become too attached?
Becka does not tell people they will not become attached.
She tells them that attachment is part of the point.
“Attachment means you are doing a good job.”
The love that makes saying goodbye difficult is the same love a rescue animal may desperately need while learning to trust again.
A foster home gives an animal the chance to experience safety, routine, affection and family life before moving into a permanent home.
The goodbye may hurt.
Then another animal gets the same chance.
You Don’t Have to Foster to Help
Not everyone is able to bring an animal into their home.
Becka wants people to know that rescue still needs them.
Sharing rescue stories and adoptable animals can help them reach the person they were waiting for. Volunteers can help at markets, with donations or through community outreach.
Education matters too.
One of the simplest ways people can help animals in their own communities is by supporting spay and neuter programs and helping others understand why prevention matters.
Most importantly, Becka hopes people will act when they encounter an animal who needs help rather than assuming someone else will.
“Please get it help. Find someone who is willing to help you help them. Community is beautiful if you ask.”
A Rescue Mission Nobody Planned
Not every rescue story goes according to plan.
On one trip, Becka and her best friend Mandie were traveling with five rescue animals when delays caused them to miss their connecting flight.
It was the middle of the night.
There was no suitable flight and no hotel that could accommodate them and all five animals.
So they rented a car.
And drove home.
For 23 hours.
Through snowstorms.
Faced with the choice between laughing and crying, Becka remembers exactly what they chose.
They laughed.
What the Animals Have Taught Her
Rescue has taught Becka patience.
It has also shown her that she is capable of loving animals that others might overlook or consider too difficult.
She believes animals have relationships, families and bonds of their own, and that people could learn something from the way those connections are formed.
Her experiences have also strengthened something she believes deeply:
Animals deserve to exist in this world alongside us.
Building Something Bigger
One of the biggest surprises for Becka since starting Who Rescued Who NS has been discovering just how many people are willing to help.
Volunteers, fosters, adopters, donors, rescue partners and supporters have shown her how much compassion already exists in the community.
She is especially proud of what she and Hannah have built together.
“We continue to encourage each other every day and pour into each other with love and understanding.”
And, of course, she is proud of the animals they have been able to save.
Compassion. Connection. Deliverance.
When asked to describe Who Rescued Who NS in three words, Becka chose:
Compassion. Connection. Deliverance.
And when asked to finish one simple sentence, her answer captured much of what brought her here in the first place.
“Rescue is…”
“Helping the voiceless, because you’d want someone to help you if the roles were reversed.”
Looking Ahead
Becka’s vision for the future of Who Rescued Who NS goes far beyond simply increasing the number of animals the organization can rescue.
She imagines a place where animals and community come together.
A sanctuary.
A place where volunteers could walk rescue dogs through the woods near Peggy’s Cove, where visitors could spend time helping animals while experiencing Nova Scotia’s natural beauty.
She imagines a cat café where people could meet and interact with adoptable cats.
Most of all, she imagines a community with the resources, people and opportunities needed to save more animals.
It is a much bigger version of the question Becka asked herself when she saw that stray outside a home in Freeport nearly a decade ago:
There has to be a way to help.
Today, she is helping build that way.